Now if someone could just put out Superargo on disc, life would be complete.

Harry, how can you keep crying poor when you keep making lists of all the discs you're buying, the fact that you have FOUR Macs and a coupla iPods, and are going to be getting A new laptop that will run you what - 2.5 to 3.5 GRAND? If you just dove into HD-DVD first on a whim because of a great price and followed it up by going on a spending spree, fine. If you're going to get a BD burner with your expensive new bit of kit, fine. Just don't post lamearse excuses. Gah.

Finally, what does Kevin Collins think of his 'buddy' Richard Doherty's comments and the fact that they crowed about their lead and then revised their player forecasts down to about half the next day? Yes yes O.K., I'm trolling there! Both camps shit me.

You know another reason this war sucks? Because we won't see any spectacular Criterion Hi-def goodness until it ends! Whoever is going to win, Hurry up with it, dammit!

And PlasmaOrb, you're not helping.

WHAT GAMES? POOR BASTARD.

And you already are in the debate...and MOOT MOOT MOOT.

Microsoft flunkies to jump on this though in 5,4,3,2...

Actually y'know if you just chopped off that silly first bit of your post, I woulda agreed with you. It's just the moronic re-buying thing that makes me crazy because 9 times out of ten it's based on ignorance combined with ego. So I went off. Fair?

Yes I'm well aware that it's only been mass market for about 7 of those, but don't you see the parallel (to the start of DVD) with early adopters taking up new tech while Joe Blow thinks there's no need? For that matter, the only actual new feature DVD had over laserdiscs was that the menus were animated. So why did we need DVD then? Sure the size but the point is that it was ostensibly an LD anyway and people wouldn't have TVs that could take advantage of the digital visuals for the best part of a decade. See what I'm sayin'? The E.A.s bring the price down so when the mass market's ready they get a better, cheaper product and the regular Joes can just ignore it in the meantime. See? Works out fine.

The other part is that why would you sit around for years AFTER something like HDTV comes out (and you'd be blind if you didn't see it has exploded in the last year) to give people something to play on it? Doesn't make much sense. Like the idiots who trash the new consoles because "we don't need it yet" who would be whingeing when they DO think they need it because nothing would have been developed!! Same with HD discs.

As far as the double-dip thing goes (that was a lot clearer to me this time), I just go to websites and read things like Widescreen Review and try to keep my ear to the ground as sometimes a site does get wind of a staggered release. Better than nothing. And I outsmarted Sony by never buying one of the 37 different releases of men in black. I can wait 'til high def for that one, especially as most studios have been mastering in high def for a couple of years now, so we all know they're coming...

Harry got conned by the HD-DVD guy (gee, why do you THINK he paid him a friendly and strangely well-timed visit? Hmmmm...) because Sony have long since stopped using mpeg 2 and as I said were using it to catch up as their mastering tools were based on it, even though vc1 and the superior avc h264 were available to them since the start. Also long since passed is the initial trouble they were having with 50gig limits so for a while there yes it was possible that HD-DVD had LESS compression. Not ever again, but you see the point. It's also only recently that Blu-ray has gone all out with max bitrates/less compression with the Pirates movies taking up a ton of the 50 gig limit. But still there's mastering and telecine which means there will be good and bad transfers on both sides, as with good old DVD.

It did take a couple of years for DVD to get the hang of intelligent compression, toning down edge enhancement and so on, and God knows there is still the odd artifact-fest (or 'articles' as Harry likes to call 'em). So yes HD-DVD actually CAN look better similarities and disparities notwithstanding.

As for special features, yes people obviously give a crap or the market would never had gone to the extra expense for the last decade. Why spend MORE money to make the things (although what most people don't know is that many of the early and not-so early extras, commentaries & docos were quietly swiped from Laser) when you 'don't have to'? It doesn't make sense considering the greed of all involved.

Also, yes it seems that 99% of the people who post on this site are EXACTLY the sort of audience that loves special features. Duh. So here at least yes you're pretty much the only one. And BTW where exactly is the Ludovico Technique on the disc that MAKES you watch the extras against your will? IGNORE them if they upset you that much! " I don't want the details revealed" - so DON'T WATCH them, dummkopf! You act like someone's forcing you to - like the people that think they're being made to buy all their DVDs again. Fair enough if you wish everything was 'superbit' but the moronic point about "Doesn't that kind of ruin" everything is as un-thought out and naive as saying musicians don't appreciate music anymore because they learn all the technical aspects of how to play their instruments, taking away the 'mystery'. WTF is wrong with enjoying a film on BOTH levels??!

Dummkopf.

P.S. Soylent - great idea about the dedicated talkback.

Like Chrighton says they're pretty much always using AVC and VC1 now, but he was wrong in saying "as soon as AVC was available to them". No, the main reason as I stated before was that it had more to do with Sony's mastering software being based on and optimised for mpeg2 (which makes sense considering regular DVD) and trying to pull a fast one in getting up to speed quickly with the amount of titles they got out the door to catch up with HD-DVD.

Now this has much less to do with good picture quality as much as efficiency. Yes mpeg2 is inferior in that to get the SAME picture quality you need a much higher bitrate and use a lot more disc space than say, AVC. Which makes sense seeing as AVC is ALSO KNOWN as the Apple-developed h264, which is ALSO known as mpeg4 part 10. Funny that.

Neither of you seem to be aware that the video specs for BOTH formats are the SAME (which sort of makes the 'available to them' thing a bit incorrect). So even though Blu-ray CAN absolutely look better than HD-DVD due to more disc-space/less compression, WHY can HD-DVD still look better (even if you'd think the same codec would mean the same info for both formats)? - Quality control and telecine/transfer. As it's always been.

Comprendé?